A market of application services using stereoscopic contents and related devices has been formed domestically and internationally based on a mobile phone, a digital camera, a digital video disk (DVD), and a PDP. Accordingly, there has been a demand for defining a standard for system information or control information (metadata) for capturing, storing, and reproducing stereoscopic contents and a file format including the same.
Korea Patent Publication No. 2006-0056070, entitled “Apparatus and method for processing 3D moving images using MPEG-4 object descriptor and structure” (hereinafter, referred to as a first patent) disclosed a 3D moving image object descriptor having new information such as a type of a 3D moving image, various display types, and viewpoints. Korea Patent Application No. 2006-0100258, entitled method for transmitting stereoscopic image data; hereinafter: second patent) disclosed a file format including a video data unit including stereoscopic image information and a header unit including metadata for decoding and reproducing stereoscopic image information as a file format for data of video decoded for stereoscopic contents.
However, the first and second patents fail to introduce a method for identifying contents when 2D contents or 3D contents are organized and provided together (that is, when 2D contents and 3D contents are used together), a method for providing stereoscopic camera and display information when 3D contents have different stereoscopic camera and display information, and stereoscopic track reference information when 3D contents formed of two elementary streams.